From: ········@bayou.uh.edu
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Date: 
Message-ID: <5eimv3$fpk@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>
Rainer Joswig (······@lavielle.com) wrote:
: In article <··········@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>, ········@Bayou.UH.EDU
: (········@bayou.uh.edu) wrote:

: > The best IDE I've seen, VC++ 4.0, couldn't even come close
: > to matching the productivity of Lisp running in a generic
: > text editor like Edit simply because when all was said and
: > done I was *STILL* programming in C++. 

: I'm biased. But Macintosh Common Lisp has a ***nice***
: programming environment and with the work of Digitool
: and their users things will improve a lot.

You Macintosh users always get the best stuff!  I'm sick
of it.  Die Apple Die!!!!  :)  (hey it's a joke don't shoot!)

Seriously though, Lisp with a powerful environment *IS* heaven.
I'm actually to the point of looking for Linux so I can get
more good stuff (it seems pickings for languages in general
and Lisp in particular are jucier over in Linux-land than
in Win95 territory).


: Also from an IDE point of view, I won't forget LispWorks.
: LispWorks has some very nice graphical tools. AND ---
: --- it will be released on Windows NT (this year I hope).

Could you tell me more about LispWorks or point me to a URL
for more info?  Is it commercial for example or pd?  How's
the GUI support?  Extensions?  Etc....?


: -- 
: http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/

--
Cya,
Ahmed

Brains for dinner, brains for lunch
Brains for breakfast, brains for brunch
Brains at every single meal
Why can't we have some guts?
	"Brain Eaters" by the Misfits

From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-ya023180002102970307550001@news.lavielle.com>
In article <··········@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>, ········@Bayou.UH.EDU
(········@bayou.uh.edu) wrote:

> : I'm biased. But Macintosh Common Lisp has a ***nice***
> : programming environment and with the work of Digitool
> : and their users things will improve a lot.
> 
> You Macintosh users always get the best stuff!  I'm sick
> of it.  Die Apple Die!!!!  :)  (hey it's a joke don't shoot!)

Since I'm using it myself, we (Lavielle) decided to
distribute it in Germany (http://www.lavielle.de/digitool/mcl.html).
We see this as service for the (german) Lisp community.

> Seriously though, Lisp with a powerful environment *IS* heaven.

Well, from a productivity view MCL is hard to beat, because
it is very simple to use and you can develop applications
with heavy native user interfaces (examples are Symbolic Composer,
D3, CLM, Babylon, ...). This is not onyl my (biased) opinion,
just ask on ········@digitool.com or news:comp.lang.lisp.mcl
whether people like MCL. ;-)

> : Also from an IDE point of view, I won't forget LispWorks.
> : LispWorks has some very nice graphical tools. AND ---
> : --- it will be released on Windows NT (this year I hope).
> 
> Could you tell me more about LispWorks or point me to a URL
> for more info?  Is it commercial for example or pd?  How's
> the GUI support?  Extensions?  Etc....?

http://www.harlequin.com/ . Expect to pay *big* bucks for
the full Unix version. I wonder what the pricing model
will be for LispWorks on Windows?

I have to correct myself a bit, if it comes to an IDE,
Symbolics Genera is still unbeaten. Sigh. After all this years.

-- 
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/
From: William A. Barnett-Lewis
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Date: 
Message-ID: <5ej6bs$fc2@grandcanyon.binc.net>
In article <·································@news.lavielle.com>, 
······@lavielle.com says...

>
>I have to correct myself a bit, if it comes to an IDE,
>Symbolics Genera is still unbeaten. Sigh. After all this years.
>
>-- 
>http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/

Well.... there is this little thing called Medley ya' know... 

OK, slight bias, I know. But they were not the only ones making nice lisp 
enviornments...now, if I could only get my bloody mouse to work right!!



-- 
William A. Barnett-Lewis
······@mailbag.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We are artists.  Poets paint motion  and light.  Historians paint stills.  It 
can be dangerous to get history from a poet.  It can also be the greatest 
blessing."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Cracauer
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Date: 
Message-ID: <1997Feb24.114003.16267@wavehh.hanse.de>
········@Bayou.UH.EDU (········@bayou.uh.edu) writes:

>Could you tell me more about LispWorks or point me to a URL
>for more info?  Is it commercial for example or pd?  How's
>the GUI support?  Extensions?  Etc....?

It is a "full-priced" commercial Unix implementation. See
www.harlequin.com. They ship demos versions, as do other Lisp
companies, so it is quite pointless to comment on the quality and
usablity here.

But related to the actual discussion, Lispworks takes some Lisp
concepts further than other Lisp implementations on stock hardware. 

Lispworks is an integrated environment with editor and browsers, while
most other implementations use an external editor and integrate
manually between Lisp runtime and some tools.

The result is that Lispworks has advantages when it comes to a number
of customizations and programmability (word?) of tools. Die-hard Lisp
hackers often find the closest possible integration of running Lisp
and tools used to program it just right. Others find it important to
use their Lisp from the same editor they use for everything
else. Die-harder Lisp fans will of course use the Lispworks editor for
everything else, too :-)

In that way, like Rainer said, it is closer to the environment of a
Lisp machine than most other stock-hardware Lisps are. Of course, it
has it disadvantages, too. You can shoot your editor by killing your
Lisp image and you can't use normal elisp code for the editor (what
Franz Allgro can). See the ralated thread about editors going on just
now in comp.lang.lisp.

Lispworks has a number of extensions (Prolog, database access,
interface to knowledgeworks) and advanced GUI building tools.

As I said, demo versions are your friend. MCL and CMUCL/Hemlock are
other integrated Common Lisp/Editor/Tools systems.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
···············@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin